Samuel Richardson
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
(1689 – 1761)
[pic] Samuel Richardson (1689 – 1761) was a self-educated tradesman who had little formal literary training, yet he made an impact on English literature which is nothing the less remarkable. He expanded the dramatic possibilities of the novel through an inventive use of the letter form (thus contributing to the emergence of the so-called “epistolary novel”) and was the promoter of sentimentalism[1]. Together with Daniel Defoe and Henry Fielding, he is credited with having laid the basis of the modern novel; his literary works, which in the 19th century were particularly criticised for their sentimentalism and moralism, are today acknowledged as being extremely influential in the development of the English novel.
Life Samuel Richardson was born in 1689 in Derbyshire in a low middle class family. His school nickname, “Serious and Gravity”, would have fitted him throughout his life. Young Samuel was intended for the church, but, since the family means did not allow that, at the age of 17 he was sent to London to be the apprentice of a printer. Though both he and some of his critics seemed to be preoccupied with the perceived inadequacy of his education, Richardson soon turned into a very successful businessman. The pattern of his evolution through life is illustrative of the bourgeois environment of the 18th century: he started from being a printer’s apprentice, and ended up climbing on the social ladder by marrying the printer’s daughter. Eventually, he inherited his father-in-law’s printing press, one that was to be known as one of the three best in London, a fact that brought to himself and his family the prosperity that was necessary to lead another sort of life. By 1754 he had become one of the most successful and respected men in his trade of business, printer of the journals of the House of Commons, Master of the Stationer’s Company, and Law Printer to the King. Samuel Richardson was married twice, but both
(1689 – 1761)
[pic] Samuel Richardson (1689 – 1761) was a self-educated tradesman who had little formal literary training, yet he made an impact on English literature which is nothing the less remarkable. He expanded the dramatic possibilities of the novel through an inventive use of the letter form (thus contributing to the emergence of the so-called “epistolary novel”) and was the promoter of sentimentalism[1]. Together with Daniel Defoe and Henry Fielding, he is credited with having laid the basis of the modern novel; his literary works, which in the 19th century were particularly criticised for their sentimentalism and moralism, are today acknowledged as being extremely influential in the development of the English novel.
Life Samuel Richardson was born in 1689 in Derbyshire in a low middle class family. His school nickname, “Serious and Gravity”, would have fitted him throughout his life. Young Samuel was intended for the church, but, since the family means did not allow that, at the age of 17 he was sent to London to be the apprentice of a printer. Though both he and some of his critics seemed to be preoccupied with the perceived inadequacy of his education, Richardson soon turned into a very successful businessman. The pattern of his evolution through life is illustrative of the bourgeois environment of the 18th century: he started from being a printer’s apprentice, and ended up climbing on the social ladder by marrying the printer’s daughter. Eventually, he inherited his father-in-law’s printing press, one that was to be known as one of the three best in London, a fact that brought to himself and his family the prosperity that was necessary to lead another sort of life. By 1754 he had become one of the most successful and respected men in his trade of business, printer of the journals of the House of Commons, Master of the Stationer’s Company, and Law Printer to the King. Samuel Richardson was married twice, but both